The Year of Magical Thinking
by Messiah91
Summary: A dark meditation on how Sam must feel stuck in the thick of his uniquely tragic life. Also, Dean buys Sam some underwear.


**The Year of Magical Thinking**

Disclaimer: I don't own "Supernatural" or profit from it in any way; I merely plunder its intellectual property for my own amusement.

Author's Note: You may notice that I've scrambled the canon a tad here, being vague on dates or timelines, and that my characterizations may run towards the AU, but it's all in service of a good story, and I hope you agree.

**I**

_It's endless. I don't think I've ever noticed that before; though I've cruised these fields for years, their dark smudges the fittingly desolate stage of my life, I don't think I've noticed their scope, the sheer expansiveness of their outreach. That too I think, my inability for a time to look beyond the tinted windows of the car in which I did my cruising, is indicative of who I am – was._

_Not that it matters much, does it? Who I was is who I was, not who I am, thus the distinction. Who I am is a person who notices things, who sees what's beyond him…or at least, I see something. But something is better than nothing right; seeing through the window is better than just noticing that the window exists._

This is what I tell myself: these platitudes I murmur to me. The truth isn't about such impressive, intangible verbs like **is **or **was**. The truth is about things far more sharp: **death**, **loneliness**, **blame**. How I wish I was alone in my own head – alone to create an endlessly large room to fill with all my discontent and rationalities. But that's not how it works. How it works is how I am, noticing how big the fields are that go speeding past my passenger window as my brother whistles something to keep himself awake; can't have the driver snoozing on the job, can we? I envy him in a way – he's as broken as I am, I think, but he keeps moving in a way I never could: he whistles and I make side observations about the enormity of grasslands.

"Sammy," he interjects into my tangle, "you ok?'

This is why I love my older brother: he asks me a question he already knows the answer to – he knows that a healthy, dilapidated "No" is burbling up from within me – in hopes to prod me towards an answer I could have, if I wanted to. Here's the rub, Dean: I don't want much of anything anymore. I did once, I suppose, but it left me gutted and amputated. Still, I have you.

"I'm fine," I smile. It hurts my lips.

He nods, keeps driving. Those fields keep streaking by; I keep thinking. A game is what it is, I think. What's worse is that the word – "game" – applies to my life, when I wax pessimistic, in so many different ways. It's what I do, what I did, what I mean. There's a problem there, I think. Then I shy away from this particular train, waving as it pulls away from my station: it's too early yet in my newly-christened solitude to consider these things. That's for later – for a dusky room, only shadows and echoes to see me and care.

I turn my head, instinct from a long-ago connection. Seeing you though, against even the mightiest of my raw tendencies, re-affirms _me_ somehow. And not just the me of my own oblivion; the me I once found tolerable, the me who was – for a time – cocooned quite comfortably in a hell of a profession. Then something changed. No, not changed – lost. Again I step off the platform, wave gamely at the chugging away of thoughts I won't consider yet. It's too far away from dawn to dream of the light just yet.

"I was thinking of stopping. We could stock-up on stuff: clothes and food, supplies and such." Dean swoops towards me for the second time this evening; it isn't the dawn but it'll do.

"Sure, when you think?"

"A bit, unless you were intending on shopping at Nowheresville: Food & Pharmacy."

I laugh – it's what's expected; so is this, lately: "I think I'll grab some more sleep, been so tired lately you know. Just wake me when we get there so I can stop you from stocking up on a year's worth of Cheetos and Mountain Dew."

"Sure thing, little brother."

Sleep now, I guess. I'm not quite sure it's the better alternative; some part of me would still rather drift about in the space between me and my brother, looking for rescue maybe or purpose. I think that part is dying.

I take back what I said about sleep – I'll welcome it to get away from myself. It'll be a nice little vacation for me; no sun, surf, or women: just darkness and silence…

_Nothing to do, here – thinking leads me places I've never known, won't know, and talking to you…well, an addict usually doesn't self-seek rehab for a reason, right? But there's still some of Sam Winchester, Demon Hunter left I imagine. Otherwise, why would I still be creating illusions, day after day? Dean sees right through them most of the time; what he glimpses behind it though, that's the true mystery. My crumbling façade should beckon him in: a firefighter saving a crying baby from a burning building. Sometimes my lies work more like quicksand: they hold me tight, while he just stands on the sidelines wringing his hands anxiously._

_A year ago perhaps, maybe longer, I tried this whole dark and brooding act. It didn't fit well on me – kept dragging the ground. I wish sometimes the closet where I'd put it up stayed locked and lost forever. But in my line of work the places where you hide your heart never stay gone. I take that back, your heart's los__t when everyone around you that __you care about with it is lost too. Does that mean I'm alone?_

"Wake up, kiddo. We're here."

No, I'm never alone.

**II**

The lights from the parking lot – filled even at this hour with hordes of young mothers, their screaming charges, and the laden, barely-working, buggies they carry about with them – reflect off the car windows to shoot back harmlessly at people who would care to peer into the vehicle; to wonder why two handsome young men would come prowling up on a local supermarket at God Knows When o'clock. Look all you like, boys and girls: you won't see much but the superb tint job Dean keeps maintained year round, while I sit more comfortably in my Ivory Tower.

My brother whips into a space very near the entrance, opens and closes the door – exits the car. He stands at his window for a moment and I can just imagine the indecision playing across his features: this isn't normal of his younger sibling, his Sammy, and he hasn't yet mastered the art of dragging me places. He better start soon; when one spends all their time mulling over the desiccation of their own life, it leaves very little time for shopping.

"You coming, Sammy?"

"Give me a second: going from sleeping to navigating hordes of soccer moms and bright lights takes some adjustment."

"Tell me about it: no rest for the wicked."

Don't be so coy Dean; there's only one of those here, and it sure ain't you – all heavy-drinking and self-destructive ways to leave your baby brother, mentally unstable more and more each day by the way, alone forever to the contrary. I take a breath, "I'll meet you inside in like two seconds."

He nods his head, though I can no longer see him through the window to be sure, then turns and walks through the entrance. My turn: one more quick breath before a marathon of light and close proximity to the one person who could pull me from my self-enforced, supernaturally-induced, hell. I think I still hate him a little too much to let that happen, but the trick with Dean is how he always manages to surprise you; how he'll worm his way back into my heart. I can imagine the leap of joy "Sammy" would feel at having his big bro behind him, but all I feel is the slow and deep agony that would come after. Better this than that.

I push myself through the passenger-side door, turn towards the brightly-lit entrance (is it Wal-Mart? Costco?), draw a deep breath and start walking; time to grin and bear it, Sammy boy.

I catch up with Dean near the entrance, right before rows of food began dominating one half of the store. "I think we'll tackle the munchies first," is the only indication he gives of his next move. Perhaps he feels that it is enough, that we are still close enough for me to just remember that he tackles all shopping trips in a particular order – food, clothes, "other stuff". We aren't, we can't be. I won't let us, for me: for you.

He grabs a buggy and off we go: Dean grabbing this or that from the canned goods, the frozen vegetables, the ice cream. He seems sloppy, but if he ever sits down and sets out to, you know, shop for groceries, the results would surprise anyone whose only encounter with my brother was at a bar, dark, and with him a tad messy as an almost-drunk. Our purchases are always inevitably low-fat, low-sodium, but still edible. Just another of his gifts.

"This about wraps it up, don't you think? See anything we missed: some more soda or fried tuna rings?" He tries to bait me into the conversation: first with inclusion and then with humor. It's an interesting switch-up from the Master of the Quick Joke and one I guess I use to appreciate; the way he'd show a different manner only around his little brother. Now it makes me ache for all the things I am no longer, and all the people with whom he can no longer be different.

Next stop clothes, and this time we're going all out. Dean declares early on that we could use a true re-do of our wardrobe – another of his ploys to involve me, get me whining about my manly shredded jeans I don't want replaced or the money we don't have that he doesn't need to spend. I say nothing.

We pass through racks and rows of colors and styles. He'll pull a certain shirt from a rack of similar ones and hold it up to me, nod, then throw it on top of our food. He's always been like this: Dad never went with me to buy new clothes – I doubt he'd know where to start, even what size I wore of what – but Dean stepped up to the plate. From when he was old enough to handle money confidently (about age 10, from Dad's reckoning) we'd head out by ourselves to the nearest thrift store or discount strip mall to stock up on pants, shirts, socks, and underwear. Me always tagging behind my big brother as he chose what he instinctively knew I wanted, then he'd hold it up to me, less to check the fit than to re-confirm that this or that article of clothing was indeed what I'd want. Very rarely did I shake my head no.

We finish with shirts and pants, with me now having three new of each, and move into the "under layers", as I once deemed them during one of our early unaccompanied expeditions.

The trip has been too long. I start to fade away, an attempt to lose the facts of my brother's obvious presence next to me – every few moments turning his head to crack a joke or prod me into an answer to a legitimate question. I attempt to drain the background of cellophane packages full of athletic socks and boxer-briefs of all existence. It doesn't work. Something better, or soon I may very nearly start talking to Dean of my own volition, habit seeping in like rot.

"You still wear these, right?" He says, holding up a size medium pack of white Hanes Select Briefs.

"Yeah," I murmur – something an outsider would mistake for embarrassment that his sibling was flaunting his underwear preferences, especially for a style now widely-relegated to the elderly or the very young.

For me it's a last-ditch effort to pull away, end this whole bonding experience before it begins to work.

Dean tosses the briefs into our buggy, where they land on top of the two packs of assorted boxer-briefs he always buys for himself. He turns to the parallel rack of socks and grabs a few packs for the two of us. The socks we buy have been the same since we've been hunting, since forever. They're always thicker than tube socks but just as long, just another piece of protective attire in a job field that craves safety; just another measure against the chaos we fight hour by hour – the toll measured always in lives, but the effects much farther reaching.

"You can head back out to the Impala if you want Sammy. I'm just going to buy a couple more packs of underwear for you, if that's ok, and maybe another pair of jeans." Dean says.

"No boxers this time, remember?" I growl, referencing an old joke he played on me in my brooding adolescence (right before my bubble of hero-worship for him feigned its own death in hopes of lighting a fire of rebellion in me). I figure it's the smallest bone I can toss him for rescuing me from this.

"Nope, no big boy undies for you, little bro: I'll only buy those cute tighty-whities, as you command." He taunts back, the biggest smile of the evening breaking out on his face.

I scoff, attempt a scowl. But I fear it's not stern enough to cover my complete relief at being able to leave this expansive haven of Bright Lights and Self-Help; a paradise of Pop Culture, which, today, beckons each man or woman to his own salvation. I know where my salvation lies: in the darkness, away from anyone and anything.

So, to that I flee.

**III**

The ride home doesn't even need the power of the engine beneath our feet, so strong are the currents of anticipation and raw flowing between us.

When I finally glimpse the entrance to our latest motel room I nearly start convulsing with the strength of my relief. It seems foolish in hindsight to think that just because I made it back to the room that I'd be able to sequester myself away: I mean, after the shopping and the night ride and all these weeks of silence, a "Chick Flick Moment" was inevitable with my white knight, but I'm still stuck in denial; that's part of the problem, I suppose.

But before I have to come up with exit strategies, there are groceries to unload. Dean leaves first to pop the trunk, a grace period of seconds for me, but then I hear his call for help. I sigh. I help.

As we're trundling through the entrance to the room, Dean burdened with all our food while our fancy new threads are in my hands, I realize another of the myriad things my brother has done to help cure an affliction in me he can't imagine. This room is nicer than the ones we'd have stayed in last year. Back then we were two brothers-in-arms roughing it together; we'd make it through any rats and suspicious stains they could throw at us. Now, it's more a nurse and his invalid who thinks a change of scenery will reinvigorate the heart. The irony of this though curls my lips into a sour affectation: right organ, wrong problem.

"I'll put up the cold stuff in the fridge. You think you could put up your clothes?" Dean says.

"Sure. I think I'll take a shower afterward, and then turn in." I reply.

"If these milk and eggs don't prove too stubborn, I believe I'll be joining you."

We turn to our separate corners, yet another reminder of our new arrangement these last days. Dean cracks open the fridge-freezer combo and begins unloading our next week's sustenance while I creak open drawers, depositing Dean's new button-downs (in a variety of dark blues and greens, mind you), pants, and boxer-briefs (in shades very much like his shirts). Then I move onto my stuff. I fold in the all but one of the new shirts – leaving out a shirt-sleeve of particularly interesting yellow hue – then the pants follow. Finally I ball up our socks and rip open the underwear packaging: ripping the three air-brushed models into tiny pieces and leaving their picaresque abs in little shreds on the bedspread.

I fold up my dozen or so new briefs and then slip them into the top drawer of our dresser. They'll be great company for my ratty old Abercrombie & Fitch stretch briefs and Tommy Hilfiger trunks. Before I forget, I snatch up one pair of the underwear and nearly run into the shower with the clothes, locking the door as I hear Dean finish up his half of the chores and turn to my now vacant workstation. Close one.

I set my change of clothes on the toilet seat and start the water, setting it up to be steaming hot. In the minute that takes to heat I turn to the bathroom mirror as it steams up and I envision what it would be like for me, Mr. Winchester, to disappear as I seem to in the vanity. The fantasy fills me with a hope tinged with dread.

The water is ready and I step into the shower, letting the heat pound over my muscles. I try to feel that water pounding my subconscious, massaging away my worries and experiences, to let me melt down into the drain. But nothin' doing. When I open my eyes a moment later I'm still a tired twentysomething orphan, on an endless road trip with his brother where the only exciting people we meet we end up killing. Or they kill us. No, never us, him: Dad.

It takes me a moment but I notice the water running down my body is no longer solely coming from the shower head. And that _noise_ certainly isn't either.

"Sammy?!" Dean whisper-shouts into the bathroom. No, I guess that noise would be coming from me.

"I'm almost done!" I reply, reaching down to switch off a relaxing shower that ran too short to do much relaxing.

In the next minute I feel my body turn its newly-accustomed cold as the water evaporates off my skin. I slip on the shirt and then the briefs and then cover myself in a memory: a pair of sleeping pants Dean bought me right after Jessica, his token of acceptance for what I was and what I'd become in those next months. They're a little worn after all these months of moving and hunting, but just slipping them on does something even the water couldn't. I begin to melt.

The door opens and steam goes rushing out. A second later I see Dean's concerned visage and I ready myself for my customary flinch away from it. None comes; instead I take a surprising step forward.

"Sammy?" I can see how I look to him: damp and lank, wearing a fresh outer shell but clearing crumbling on the inside. My eyes meet his sincerely for the first time since the hospital a lifetime ago. The contact sets off a chain reaction I thought I'd fear for the rest of my days, or at least his. His affection pours from those hazel orbs, wrapping around me and pulling me, _pulling _me, towards him.

"I'm so tired, Dean," is all I can manage as my arms find their way around his back and my head to his shoulder.

"Shhh, Sammy, I'm here. Go ahead and break; I'll put you back together," he responds, his voice flavored with more warmth and solidity than I'd dared expect after my season of wintery discontent.

"He's gone. You're leaving. I might as well not be here either," I strangle out, throwing my most hated truth straight into his face.

"But you are here, little bro, and as long as you are, so am I," he says, again with not a trace of resentment.

That's when I see it, standing there in a mediocre motel clutching Dean, my brother – my lifeline: the dawn is breaking through the window, the edges glowing with a faint pink aura.

"We'll be ok, Sam, I'll make sure of it."

I search within myself to see if I have the strength to doubt him, but I don't. Now that I can see the light, I no longer have to dream, to pretend, to immerse myself in illusion and disconnect, "It's ok Dean. I'm awake."

**The End**


End file.
